10 Actors Who Owe Their Careers to Netflix

All actors start somewhere, even the super famous ones. Most of the time, your favorite celeb started out with bit roles and guest spots on police procedurals and network dramas before eventually getting top billing on a project where audiences actually notice them. In the era of streaming, that career path can be a little more meandering, or it can make a small actor into a major star overnight.

We take them for granted now, but many of today’s major household names got their big breaks from Netflix, of all places. (Yes, there was a time when no one knew who Pedro Pascal was, we can’t believe it either.) The streamer loves to stack its shows and movies with people who have been celebrities for a long time, like Dwayne Johnson and Sandra Bullock, but its series and original films also have the capability to showcase the budding talents of total unknowns. When an actor gets an almost overnight rise to international fame seemingly overnight, it’s likely because their new Netflix show just dropped, and then was watched by millions of people all at once.

Netflix as a production studio hasn’t been around for very long, but it’s still managed to populate Hollywood with more than a few bona fide stars, some of whom we may never have known about had fate not seen to cast them in the next big crime drama or teen romcom that randomly made it into the Netflix Top 10. It’s always fun to look back and see where our faves first broke big — in these actors’ cases, it’s all thanks to Netflix.